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Teacher Wilmar Mejia moved seamlessly through his first day as a teacher of world cultures and geography with a special crew of 14 students at Vivian Field Middle School. They’re all part of two-way, dual-language program that began in kindergarten at Janie Stark Elementary School.

Parents and students pleaded and cajoled the school superintendent and the board of trustees, in English and in Spanish, to extend the program into a middle school several months back. Reason: high-performing students.

This is the first day of the first year that the program launches at Vivian Field Middle School. Such programs strive for biliteracy, not just bilingualism, and deeper understanding of other families and other cultures. ”I believe that develops their character and makes them better citizens,” Mejia said.

“Dual-language students are so used to using their minds at 110 percent,” Mejia added.

Mejia introduced his sixth-grade students to a National Geographic book on “culturas del mundo,” or world cultures, and he asked students to tell them about their own families and what distant places their grandparents and parents came from. Cuba, St. Louis, Argentina, Iowa, and Mexico, came the quick answers. Mejia comes from Guatemala, he said.

His classroom looks a bit like a family den, with two couches and three tables and wall posters in Spanish. To make students even more comfortable, Mejia clustered the students on the floor to tell their family stories.

Dallas ISD, Irving ISD, Grand Prairie ISD, Lewisville ISD and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD offer dual-language programs. Texas is believed by some to lead the nation in the number of such schools. About a sixth of the almost 5 million students in Texas public and charter schools are classified as “limited English learners,” according to the Texas Education Agency.

But any student can enroll in a two-way dual language program with the end goal of becoming bilingual and biliterate in two languages.